Letter to the editor: We must clear away the rubble of failed leadership

Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - 12:01 am

In his State of the Union address, President Obama, reflecting on his first term in office, had proclaimed that we had “cleared away the rubble of crisis.”

If we closely examine the state of our economy, the conditions of our military, the nature of our politics and general mood and spirit of the American people, we have not emerged from the rubble. We are a nation that stills find itself in the path of crisis.

More than four years removed from the economic collapse of 2008, we remain a country where the unemployment rate, both real and reported, stands at levels far greater than those standing before 2008 as millions of Americans continue to struggle to find work, while millions more are underemployed or have given up on the pursuit of employment.

We are witnessing the continued struggles to bring our nation’s fiscal house in order as a series of budgetary crises, both real and contrived, has tested the will of Congress and the administration to come to terms with an economy that has not in full measure recovered from the depths of the most severe recession since the end of World War II.

The most serious crisis, perhaps, set against the backdrop of continued political wrangling of all stripes in Washington and the continued failure of committing to the task of strengthening this nation, is the crisis most enduring and profound — the crisis of leadership, or most accurately placed, the lack of leadership, seen from the White House to Capitol Hill to including the canyons of Wall Street and beyond to the boardrooms of our nation’s largest companies.

We have not seen an end to our nation’s various crises, yet there clearly is a need to clear the rubble of the failed “leadership.”